Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Biomedical and invasive research on chimpanzees will no longer be supported by the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH). They further decided last Wednesday that they will retire the 50 chimps reserved for future studies.

"We find no evidence that there is a need to continue to do research of an invasive sort on chimpanzees, not now and not going into the future", said Dr. Collins. The decision will finally close the controversial federally funded primate testing and follow the 2013 decision to retire chimpanzees to animal sanctuaries.

In addition, an allocation of $3 million to house additional animals plus the $30 million sanctuary budget set aside by federal legislators last 2000 will be requested to the Congress. In an interview, Collins cited two rationale to coming up with the decision according to the New York Times. First, the 2011 extensive independent assessment that assessed chimpanzee's use on biomedical research led the agency to retire the 300 government-owned chimpanzees two years after and also to set more stringent rules on primates' research.